Fly fishing is a very popular outdoor sport. A fly fisherman often desires, and goes to great expense, to create his/her own custom flies.
The process of creating a fly includes affixing the fly to a vice and then stringing and weaving threads about the fly in desired patterns and colors. The vice has to be sturdy so as to have minimal movement, and the vice has to be able to hold the flies during the creation process.
One issue with fly vices is that they come as one-size fits all. That is, novice vices are designed to accommodate beginners, intermediate vices are designed for more advanced fly designers, and expert vices are designed for the most experienced fly designers. Fly vices are not cheap; so, as an individual develops more and more proficiency with creating his/her own flies, more and different fly vices are needed.
Another issue with fly vices is that they are ridged; that is they have only limited capabilities to adjust to the height and position that is optimal for the fisherman. Fishermen, like society, come in all shapes and sizes such that any given fisherman often struggles to find a table of just the right height to position a vice for optimal use by that fisherman. Furthermore, during vice use the fisherman may desire or need the fly to be positioned in a different position and in order to achieve such a scenario with conventional vices, the fisherman finds himself/herself moving around the vice rather than repositioning the vice itself. The means the entire area around the table having the vice has to be unobstructed.
Still another issue is that fly fishermen often travel to various locations in search of their perfect location to fly fish. They either leave their clumsy fly vices behind because of the difficulty packing and transporting the vices or they find a way to pack and travel with their vices. Neither situation is an optimal situation with the fly fisherman.